The House That Shadows Built (1928)

CHAPTER XXII THE CAPSTONE David Wark Griffith and Adolph Zukor had in the old obscure days worked side by side in Fourteenth Street: the one as a director, throwing his own stories on the screen at a salary of fifty dollars a week; the other as a minor exhibitor, wringing small and precarious profit from five-cent admissions. When the tide of fortune began racing, they rode it together. However, their careers, while running parallel, touched only once. In 1917, after many fruitless efforts, Zukor tempted Griffith with a salary of $3 ,000 a month and drew him into the producing staff of Famous Players. Now, less than two years later, Griffith had left him to enter United Artists. Zukor, having failed to prevent this formidable combination, was departing from Hollywood when Griffith met him. And they talked over the situation with the brutal frankness of old friends. “I know what you’ve always wanted to do, Adolph,” said Griffith — “ lead the world as a super-producer. And for six or seven years you have led. But now the artists have taken things into their own hands. It’s our day” — Griffith is to be pardoned if in the fresh enthusiasm of a 269